Seven Brides For Seven Brothers

Seven Brides For Seven Brothers is a musical with a book by Lawrence Kasha and David Landay, music by Gene de Paul, Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn, and lyrics by Johnny Mercer, Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn. It is based on the 1954 Stanley Donen film of the same name which is, itself, an adaption of the short story “The Sobbin’ Women,” by Stephen Vincent Benét, based on the Ancient Roman legend of The Rape of the Sabine Women.

After a U.S. tour, the musical opened on Broadway in 1982 but quickly flopped. A more successful London production followed, and revised versions have met with success in U.S. regional theatres and in amateur productions on both sides of the Atlantic.

In Seven Brides For Seven Brothers, a man named Adam comes into town looking to hurriedly find himself a wife. While in town he meets Milly, a waitress at a local restaurant. Milly and Adam rush into marriage and immediately return to Adam’s home in the mountains. As soon as they get home, Adam reverts back to his true self, an ill-mannered and inconsiderate slob. Milly quickly learns that it is not only she and Adam that will be living in his home together, his six brothers also live with him: Benjamin, Caleb, Daniel, Ephraim, Frank and Gideon, all of whom also share Adam’s love for all things disorderly. It is then when Milly decides to reform the brothers and help them change their ways. She teaches them to dance and then takes them into town to go to a dance. At the dance, the six brothers meet six girls they like and like Adam, now want to get married. The conflict begins when each of the six girls has her own jealous suitor. When they return home from the dance turned fight, Adam reads the brothers a story and they decide to kidnap the girls and bring them back home with them.

At the start of Act II, the brothers humorously kidnap the girls and then cause an avalanche to fall and block the suitors way up to their house in the mountains. The girls are really upset by the time they reach the house. An angry Milly scolds the boys and sends them all to live in the barn, and Adam flees up the mountain to live by himself. They live there all through the winter, but by the time spring rolls around, the brothers and the girls are still in love and they move back into the house. Gideon goes up the mountain and attempts to get Adam to return home by delivering him the news that Milly had a baby girl. A changed Adam returns home to find his wife and newborn daughter waiting for him. The snow clears up and the angry suitors make their way up to the house in the mountains to find that the girls are happy and want to marry the brothers. At the end of the show, there is a wedding with seven couples and they all live happily ever after.